Upper urinary dilatation and treatment of 26 patients with diabetes insipidus: A single-center retrospective study

ObjectiveTo describe the urinary tract characteristics of diabetes insipidus (DI) patients with upper urinary tract dilatation (UUTD) using the video-urodynamic recordings (VUDS), UUTD and all urinary tract dysfunction (AUTD) systems, and to summarize the experience in the treatment of DI with UUTD.MethodsThis retrospective study analyzed clinical data from 26 patients with DI, including micturition diary, water deprivation tests, imaging data and management. The UUTD and AUTD systems were used to evaluate the urinary tract characteristics. All patients were required to undergo VUDS, neurophysiologic tests to confirm the presence of neurogenic bladder (NB).ResultsVUDS showed that the mean values for bladder capacity and bladder compliance were 575.0 ± 135.1 ml and 51.5 ± 33.6 cmH2O in DI patients, and 42.3% (11/26) had a post-void residual >100 ml. NB was present in 6 (23.1%) of 26 DI patients with UUTD, and enterocystoplasty was recommended for two patients with poor bladder capacity, compliance and renal impairment. For the 24 remaining patients, medication combined with individualized and appropriate bladder management, including intermittent catheterization, indwelling catheter and regular voiding, achieved satisfactory results. High serum creatinine decreased from 248.0 ± 115.8 μmoI/L to 177.4 ± 92.8 μmoI/L in 12 patients from a population with a median of 108.1 μmoI/L (IQR: 79.9-206.5 μmoI/L). Forty-four dilated ureters showed significant improvement in the UUTD grade, and the median grade of 52 UUTD ureters decreased from 3 to 2.ConclusionBladder distension, trabeculation and decreased or absent sensations were common features for DI patients with UUTD. Individualized therapy by medication combined with appropriate bladder management can improve UUTD and renal function in DI patients

Optically excited nanoscale ultrasonic transducers

In order to work at higher ultrasonic frequencies, for instance, to increase the resolution, it is necessary to fabricate smaller and higher frequency transducers. This paper presents an ultrasonic transducer capable of being made at a very small size and operated at GHz frequencies. The transducers are activated and read optically using pulsed lasers and without physical contact between the instrumentation and the transducer. This removes some of the practical impediments of traditional piezoelectric architectures (such as wiring) and allows the devices to be placed immediately on or within samples, reducing the significant effect of attenuation which is very strong at frequencies above 1 GHz. The transducers presented in this paper exploit simultaneous optical and mechanical resonances to couple the optical input into ultrasonic waves and vice versa. This paper discusses the mechanical and optical design of the devices at a modest scale (a few lm) and explores the scaling of the transducers toward the sub-micron scale. Results are presented that show how the transducers response changes depending on its local environment and how the resonant frequency shifts when the transducer is loaded by a printed protein sample

Main control factors of rock burst and its disaster evolution mechanism

With the gradual transfer of shallow coal mining to deep coal mining in China, the rock burst disasters are becoming an increasingly serious problem. In the process of rock burst mechanism cognition to rock burst prevention engineering, the primary task is to clarify the main factors of rock burst and to identify its risk level. In this paper, four kinds of objective factors i.e., coal rock impact tendency, mining depth, hard roof and geological structure, and three kinds of human factors i.e., coal pillar, goaf and mining unloading effect, were proposed. And the disaster evolution mechanism of each factor was discussed in detail. In terms of objective controlling factors, the impact tendency is the inherent attribute of coal/rock to accumulate deformation energy and induce impact failure. The mining depth is positively correlated with the deformation energy accumulated in the surrounding rock of the roadway, which is an essential condition for the occurrence of rock burst. The impact dynamic load and kinetic energy formed by large-scale hard roof periodic fracture are the 'fuse' to rock burst. The influence of geological structure on rock burst is significant. For fault structure, the two walls will relatively ‘rebound’ under the sudden unloading caused by mining disturbance. And the equivalent elastic modulus of the thinning area of the coal seam becomes larger, and the advanced abutment pressure is distributed in a 'double peak' pattern, which expands the impact influence range. In terms of subjective controlling factors, coal pillar is a high stress concentration area, and its size, dip angle and relative position will directly affect the probability and strength of rock burst. The goaf will induce a sudden release of energy accumulated in the stress concentration area, especially under large mining height and insufficient roof collapse conditions. Mining unloading will lead to the rapid “migration” of the stress concentration area and release a large amount of energy stored in the coal/rock, which is an important external inducement of rock burst. On this basis, the differences of main control factors of rock burst disaster in the main rock burst mining area, such as Xinwen, Luxi, Erdos, Binchang, Xinjiang and Gansu were compared and analyzed. The study emphasized the importance of identifying the main control factors and their influence degree of rock burst from an entire mine, a panel to a working face. Also, it constructed the engineering management path of rock burst from energy-reducing, energy-releasing, energy-damping to energy-resisting

Cases report: MRI findings of asymptomatically familial subependymal heterotopia with filamin A gene abnormality

Subependymal heterotopia (SEH) is a rare neuronal migration disorder consisting of gray matter nodules along the lateral ventricular walls and is often associated with other brain malformations. Despite most SEH cases showing epilepsy during their lifetimes, very few patients with asymptomatically familial SEH tend to cause misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis. We present four familial SEH cases without any positive symptoms and medical history, including two fetuses, who were diagnosed by MRI and confirmed by genetic testing with mutation of filamin A. This report emphasizes the role of MRI in the recognition of SEH at an early age of gestation and in asymptomatically familial SEH. MRI provides a fast, repeatable, reliable, and cheap choice for detecting and screening familial SEH

The pathogenic mechanism of monosodium urate crystal-induced kidney injury in a rat model

Objective(MSU) crystals usually in the kidney tubules especially collecting ducts in the medulla. Previous animal models have not fully reproduced the impact of MSU on kidneys under non-hyperuricemic conditions.MethodsIn the group treated with MSU, the upper pole of the rat kidney was injected intrarenally with 50 mg/kg of MSU, while the lower pole was injected with an equivalent volume of PBS solution. The body weight and kidney mass of the rats were observed and counted. H&E staining was used to observe the pathological damage of the kidney and to count the number of inflammatory cells. Masoon staining was used to observe the interstitial fibrosis in the kidneys of the rat model. Flow cytometric analysis was used for counting inflammatory cells in rats. ElISA was used to measure the concentration of serum and urine uric acid, creatinine and urea nitrogen in rats.ResultsAt the MSU injection site, a significantly higher infiltration of inflammatory cells and a substantial increase in the area of interstitial fibrosis compared to the control group and the site of PBS injection were observed. The serum creatinine level was significantly increased in the MSU group. However, there were no significant differences in the rats’ general conditions or blood inflammatory cell counts when compared to the control group.ConclusionThe injection of urate crystals into the kidney compromised renal function, caused local pathological damage, and increased inflammatory cell infiltration and interstitial fibrosis. Intrarenal injection of MSU crystals may result in urate nephropathy. The method of intrarenal injection did not induce surgical infection or systemic inflammatory response

Precision cold forming modelling, interfacial thermal parameter investigation and tool design

Available from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DXN056216 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Elastoplastic Mechanical Properties and Kinematic Hardening Model of 35CrNi3MoVR

The existing tensile–compression elastoplastic models are not suitable for varies of materials. An accurate constitutive model of the elastoplastic mechanical properties more suitable for 35CrNi3MoVR was produced by optimizing the existing fitting equations based on uniaxial tensile–compression tests, which are able to describe the elastoplastic stress–strain relation and Bauschinger effect varying with the maximum tensile plastic strain. A UMAT subroutine of the constitutive model in ABAQUS was proposed and conducted for FEM calculation. Hydraulic autofrettage tests were carried out under different pressures on thick-walled 35CrNi3MoVR tubes, and the results were compared with those of FEM calculations to further validate the accuracy of the fitting model. The results show that the constructed power function kinematic hardening model can effectively describe the elastoplastic mechanical properties of 35CrNi3MoVR and can be applied to the autofrettage calculation of this material. The comparison among the calculation results of different models proved that the model proposed in this research has better performance compared to other existing models. Taking the Mises stress at the inner surface of the thick-walled tubes as the evaluation criterion, the error of the power function kinematic hardening model reaches less than 3%, decreasing the error by at least 50%

A Method for Global-Scale Archiving of Imaging Data Based on QTM Pixels

A global multi-resolution image data model and a feasible solution for its seamless management and archiving remain a challenging vision. The traditional methods of the raster pixel data structure based on the idea of map projections are effective to support local or small-scale areas. However, if this structure is applied to large-scale or whole global image archiving, some significant drawbacks are unavoidable, such as data discontinuity (or overlapping), geometric distortions, etc. To overcome these deficiencies, in this paper the Quaternary Triangular Mesh (QTM) (Dutton, 1989), as a continuous, hierarchal quadtree data structure with uniform grids on a sphere, is proposed for global-scale seamless image archiving. First, the mapping relation between raster image pixels and QTM pixels is approached based on the QTM subdivision and Quaternary coding scheme (Bartholdi & Goldsman, 2001), and a corresponding algorithm of QTM pixel grey level calculation is also developed. Then, the storage structure of global-scale image archiving based on QTM pixels is presented in detail. In the end, an experiment is described using the 1km resolution NOAA data for China, comparing the differences in pixel grey levels between original image pixels and QTM pixels. The result indicates that the QTM pixel data structure can keep global-scale images seamless, and the accuracy of transformation from the imaging pixel to the QTM pixel is a loss of less than 2 grey levels for 94.5% of all pixels, the loss from 2 to 4 is 1.9%, the loss from 4 to 10 is 2%, and the rest is 1.6%. The results are good and acceptable

Evaluation Method of Floor Heave Damage Degree and a Case Study in Zaoquan Coal Mine, China

With the continuous increase of mining depth and complex mining geological conditions, the mileage of roadways in underground engineering such as coal mine is increasing year by year. Complex conditions lead to different floor heave failure laws, and the control technology and strategy should be changed accordingly. How to evaluate the damage degree of floor heave under different conditions has become an urgent problem. Firstly, this paper makes a statistical analysis on the main evaluation indexes of the damage degree of roadway floor heave. Then, the fuzzy comprehensive clustering method is used to establish the classification method of floor heave damage degree, taking the floor heave amount, floor rock fragmentation degree, coal pillar size, buried depth, and floor lithology as evaluation indexes. The damage degree of floor heave can be divided into five types: light type, obvious type, severe type, destructive type, and extremely severe type. Finally, the rationality and accuracy of the method are verified by the measured value and evaluation value of No. 130203 roadway in the Zaoquan coal mine. The results can provide reference for the evaluation of the damage degree of the floor rock in similar condition mine and provide guidance for the design of the support and stability control of the failure of the roadway floor heave